Category: Janet Evanovich Page 1 of 4

To commemorate the 11th Blogiversary of The Irresponsible Reader, I’m reposting the first six books (or, I guess, stories) I blogged about this week. This post got me my first comment here—from Goldberg himself! I did go on to love the series (at least until Goldberg moved on), so the first thing I predicted came true.

I spent the better part of an hour writing a different review this morning — it wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be, but I’d worked on it a lot. And then I lost it. One stupid, wrong and mostly stupid click of the mouse and …poof. Didn’t have time to try to recreate it, but wanted to post something new today. And hey, I just purchased the Evanovich/Goldberg short story, Pros and Cons. Perfect! That’d fit the bill. Right? well…

—–

Pros and Cons: A Short Story by Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg
Series: Fox and O’Hare, #0.5
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I’ve been eagerly awaiting The Heist since it was first announced — I’m a big fan of both Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg, so when this short story prequel was released I couldn’t resist.

I probably should have found the will power. This, at best, was not bad. Amusing at times, but most of the humor felt forced. Even then, the humor was overly broad most of the time. Worse than that, the story was chock-full of exposition dumps that are almost worthy of Dan Brown.

That said, I’ve read almost 30 books by these two over the years and have no doubt that the novels are going to be better. The primary characters — Agent O’Hare and scoundrel Fox, are promising and chock-full of potential. Sure, I’m a little less enthused about The Heist than I was yesterday, but I’ll get over that once it’s in my hot little hands.

Short version: Skip this tease, come back for the real thing.

Fortune and Glory: Tantalizing Twenty-Seven by Janet Evanovich: Stephanie’s on a Treasure Hunt

By HCNewton

On December 30, 2021

In Fiction, Janet Evanovich, Mystery/Detective Fiction/Crime Fiction/Thriller, Stephanie Plum

Fortune and Glory:
Tantalizing Twenty-Seven

by Janet Evanovich
Series: Stephanie Plum, #27

Paperback, 332 pg.
Pocket Books, 2021

Read: December 25-27, 2021
Grab a copy from your local indie bookstore!

Ranger stopped for a light and looked at me. “How about you? What’s in your bucket list?”

I was stumped. I didn’t have a bucket list. My bucket was empty.“I haven’t gotten around to making a bucket list,” I said. “Do you think that’s a personal failure?”

“No. You’re busy living every day. That’s a personal triumph.”

“It doesn’t feel like a triumph. It feels like I’m moving through my life with no important goals or aspirations.”

“What do you consider to be an important goal?”

“Being a doctor or a vulcanologist or a marine biologist or finding the Ark of the Covenant.”

What’s Fortune and Glory About?

Fortune and Glory continues the storyline kicked off in Look Alive Twenty-Five, this time Stephanie and Grandma Mazur are hunting for the treasure—whatever it may be (no one is telling) that the La-Z-Boy Gang had tucked away. Two of the surviving members are on the hunt for the clues that lead to it, too—and they’re not playing by Marquess of Queensberry Rules.

Naturally, Stephanie also has three skips to track down for Vinnie’s Bail Bonds—one of whom decides that Stephanie needs a bodyguard and devotes himself to that. Sure, Stephanie could use a bodyguard, but probably not one who has a handful (or more) of anxiety disorders that prevent him from doing much of anything.

Dodging gangsters and chasing down FTA’s, just another day in the ‘Burb for Stephanie Plum.

A Backdoor Pilot?

Evanovich has a new series starting next year about a recovery agent, Gabriela Rose. We get to meet Gabriela here because she’s been hired to recover the same treasure than Stephanie and Grandma are on the hunt for.

She’s slick, she’s skilled, she’s apparently successful—she’s pretty much the anti-Stephanie. She’s what Ranger could be if he didn’t have his whole company, either.

Gabriella’s not in the novel much, just enough to introduce her to Evanovich’s readers. But she plays a vital role when she’s around.

I enjoy it when there’s overlap between an author’s series/works, but this felt cheap.

A Change in the Offing?

Stephanie spends a lot of time considering her life, her career, her future…nothing she hasn’t done before, but it felt a bit more serious this time—going so far to ask herself “Who am I?”. Even her newfound bodyguard sees that she wants to change her life.

The presence of Gabriela and some new turmoil in her relationship with Morelli adds fuel to this self-reflective fire.

So, what did I think about Fortune and Glory?

This was fine. This was okay. It was amusing. I appreciate the ambition of the storyline (but glad Evanovich wasn’t ambitious enough to try to extend it). For a series this old, to try something like this for the first time? Pretty impressive.

I don’t know that I found anything funny, though—which isn’t good for a comedic series like this.

It’s not quite as good as the last couple of Plum novels, but not as weak as some of the others. Good enough to read and recommend, but just that good. If I actually believed this round of self-reflection was going to result in a change, I might be more optimistic about things, but I expect that #28 will be more of the same. Which isn’t necessarily bad, it’s just nothing to be excited about.

3 Stars

This post contains an affiliate link. If you purchase from it, I will get a small commission at no additional cost to you. As always, opinions are my own.

The Bounty by Janet Evanovich with Steve Hamilton: Fox and O’Hare are on the Hunt for Nazi Gold

By HCNewton

On June 24, 2021

In Fiction, Fox and O'Hare, Janet Evanovich, Mystery/Detective Fiction/Crime Fiction/Thriller

The Bounty

by Janet Evanovich with Steve Hamilton
Fox and O’Hare, #7

Hardcover, 305 pg.
Atria Books, 2021

Read: May 26-28, 2021
Grab a copy from your local indie bookstore!

“Yeah, it’s a pickle, all right,” Jake said. “We used to call missions like this one-percenters.”

“Meaning one percent chance of success?” Quentin asked. “I’ve been on a few of those myself.”

Jake smiled. “I’m not being trying to be pessimistic. As a matter of fact, one-percenters are usually the most fun. There’s no pressure when you’re trying to do the impossible.”

What’s The Bounty About?

The day has gotten away from me, so I’m not going to come up with my own synopsis for this one, but I’ll borrow the description from Evanovich’s site so I can get a little shut-eye:

Straight as an arrow special agent Kate O’Hare and international con man Nick Fox have brought down some of the biggest criminals out there. But now they face their most dangerous foe yet—a vast, shadowy international organization known only as the Brotherhood.
Directly descended from the Vatican Bank priests who served Hitler during World War II, the Brotherhood is on a frantic search for a lost train loaded with $30 billion in Nazi gold, untouched for over seventy-five years somewhere in the mountains of Eastern Europe.
Kate and Nick know that there is only one man who can find the fortune and bring down the Brotherhood—the same man who taught Nick everything he knows—his father, Quentin. As the stakes get higher, they must also rely on Kate’s own father, Jake, who shares his daughter’s grit and stubbornness. Too bad they can never agree on anything.
From a remote monastery in the Swiss Alps to the lawless desert of the Western Sahara, Kate, Nick, and the two men who made them who they are today must crisscross the world in a desperate scramble to stop their deadliest foe in the biggest adventure of their lives.

The State of the Series

Books 1-5 (co-written by Lee Goldberg) were comedic heist/con adventures, with a goofy (slightly over-the-top) supporting cast—that were just so fun to read. The sixth book (co-written by Peter Evanovich) tried to match that and just failed.

Now, Steve Hamilton has stepped into the co-writer spot and the series has shifted a bit. The Bounty is more of a straightforward thriller—sure, it’s lighter than most thrillers, but it’s not a comedy. Almost all of the supporting cast is absent, we only get Kate’s father, Jake (frequently the best part of the early books) with Nick’s father, Quentin, being introduced. Quentin isn’t goofy at all, he’s not over-the-top, but he’s a fun character. Nick’s sleight-of-hand antics and thievery are on display—but we don’t get any hint of a con job. I missed that.

I don’t know if Book 8 will get back to the early roots (my preference) or if it’ll keep going in this path. But at the very least, I can look forward to the next book again, something I feared wouldn’t happen again.

There’s a parallel to this and my mini-rant about the cover designs from a couple of weeks ago. Which you might want to give a read if you didn’t see that.

So, what did I think about The Bounty?

This was a make-or-break entry in the series for me, if I didn’t enjoy this one, I was going to walk away from these. But Evanovich and Hamilton have reassured me. This is just so much better than the disaster that was The Big Kahuna that I’m willing to embrace (at least temporarily) this new style. I hope it continues.

If you like light thrillers with a semi-Indiana Jones feel, with a dash of flirtation between the leads thrown in, you should give this a try. The first five books in the series are better, but this is a good entry point.

3.5 Stars

Twisted Twenty-Six by Janet Evanovich: Stephanie’s Discontented but Provides Readers with the Best Book in Years

By HCNewton

On January 5, 2021

In Janet Evanovich, Mystery/Detective Fiction/Crime Fiction/Thriller, Stephanie Plum

Twisted Twenty-Six

by Janet Evanovich
Series: Stephanie Plum, #26

Paperback, 305 pg.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2019

Read: December 25, 2020
Grab a copy from your local indie bookstore!

“You still want to chase after this guy?”

“You bet your ass. Just because he made fools out of us three times, don’t mean one of these times we won’t luck out. Notice he called us losers and not quitters. That’s on account of we never quit. In my mind, that’s the difference between being a loser-and a winner. A winner is willing to look like a idiot for as long as it takes to get the job done. I figure you stick with i it long enough ~ and you win. Unless you die or come down with some disease like shingles or cancer of the rectum. If I ever got cancer of the rectum, I’d go to the best rectumologist out there. Like I’d get a celebrity rectumologist. I wouldn’t mess around with some local yokel.”

“All good to know,” I said.

I don’t even need to provide dialogue tags to that, do I? If you’ve read a single Stephanie Plum novel, you know who’s saying what there.

What’s Twisted Twenty-Six About?

When we last left Stephanie*, her Grandma Mazur had left for a getaway with her new love, who just happens to be a semi-retired mobster. We pick up a week or so later, Grandma Mazur and Jimmy Rosolli had been married, and then forty-five minutes later, Rosolli died (of natural causes, I feel compelled to add). Still, even a 45-minute marriage makes Grandma a widow, but more importantly, a widow of some status in the neighborhood.

* Yeah, I know, right? I’ll talk about that in a minute.

We don’t know a lot about Jimmy’s criminal life, but among his group, he had a particular importance. He was “Keeper of the Keys.” Now, no one—not Grandma, not the cops, not almost anyone that Stephanie can talk to about Jimmy knows what that means. The few that do know, aren’t talking to anyone about them (also, they don’t believe Stephanie or Grandma when they say they don’t know where the keys are).

So Jimmy’s partners are looking for the keys, their rivals are looking for the keys. And everyone thinks Grandma Mazur either has them or can get them (she is the beneficiary of his will, after all). And none of these men are willing to take any means necessary to get her to talk. Stephanie, Ranger and Morelli team up to keep Grandma Mazur and the Plums safe.

All the while, Stephanie and Lulu are on the hunt for people who missed their court dates for the Bail Service, Stephanie is dealing with a destroyed car, Stephanie is fending off advances from Ranger—and not doing fending off much from Morelli, you know, typical stuff.

A moment of chronological accuracy

At one point, Stephanie is lamenting to Lulu about how her life isn’t working out the way she wants and states her age—a larger number than Lulu is ready for (okay, I wasn’t ready for that amount of candor, either—but the math works), and a sign that maybe Evanovich is going to start aging her in real time. It’s not long before Stephanie blows off that moment of honesty as a joke and we’re elft wit an indeterminate age again.

Still, for a couple of poages, it looked liek Evanovich might have been making a big step.

Old Dog, New Trick?

From the start of this series, there’s been a little carry-over from one book to the next—Stephanie’s sister’s marriage and kids, glacially slow advancement of her relationships with Ranger and Morelli, and so on. But largely, these are stand-alone books and can be read in any order.

Until now (obviously).

The end of Look Alive Twenty-Five leads into this book. The ending of this book propels the reader into Fortune and Glory (aka Tantalizing Twenty-Seven). This is new. This is a positive movement, there’s something to sink our teeth into. Not much, maybe, but it’s something.

I’m not sure why Evanovich has changed her approach. I’m not sure I care, either. I’m just happy to see that it has happened, and wonder where she’s going with all of this.

So, what did I think about Twisted Twenty-Six?

“I don’t want to do this job anymore. I’m not good at it. I don’t like it. I don’t like being in the bad neighborhoods looking for the bad people.”

“What would you rather do?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Do you have a direction?”

“No.”

“Babe.”

“Yeah, I’m a mess.”

“You aren’t a mess,” he said. “You’re just a little burned out.”

“It’s more than that. I’m stagnant. There’s no growth in my life.”

“That’s okay as long as you like what you’re doing. Not everyone needs to keep moving up the ladder.”

I have to read a State of the Series in these words (see also: the quotation at the top). I doubt that Evanovich set out to do that, but “mess,” “stagnant,” and directionless are words I’d use to describe this series lately. But like Stephanie’s (no doubt) futile efforts at self-improvement, over the last couple of books I’m seeing signs that Evanovich might be trying to add some direction and clarity to the series

I do not think it’ll ever reach the comedic heights it once hit. Nor do I think that Evanovich is going to suddenly become the new Grafton (not that I’d complain), but it seems like she’s taking the storytelling component of this seriously again. I could be 2-3 books away from again wondering why I’m sticking with these series. But until I get to that point, I’m going to enjoy the ride.

As for this book? It was fun—I admit to laughing out loud on a few occasions. I liked the story (I’m not convinced the bad guy was set-up correctly before the reveal, but…I’m not going to argue about it). The action was decent. I didn’t roll my eyes at the destruction of the car, and best yet, I think this is one of the best uses of Stephanie’s parents in ages (if not ever).

This might actually be a decent jumping-on point (Look Alive Twenty-Five would be marginally better) for this long-running series. This is definitely one to use to come back to the series after a time away. Or if you’re just plugging away with a new annual entry, you’ll be satisfied. Give this series a shot, it’ll be worth it.

4 Stars

This post contains an affiliate link. If you purchase from it, I will get a small commission at no additional cost to you. As always, opinions are my own.

Look Alive Twenty-Five by Janet Evanovich: A local rock star with ambition, a shoplifter, and a mysterious deli fill Stephanie Plum’s 25th novel.

By HCNewton

On December 30, 2019

In Fiction, Janet Evanovich, Mystery/Detective Fiction/Crime Fiction/Thriller, Stephanie Plum

Look Alive Twenty-Five

by Janet Evanovich
Series: Stephanie Plum, #25

Mass Market Paperback, 306 pg.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2019

Read: December 25, 2019

Someone that Vincent Plum Bail Bonds had put up the bail for skipped town, and he’d put up his deli as collateral. Vincent’s father-in-law (the owner of the Bail Bonds) has decided he wants to diversify, so he’s hanging onto it. The catch is, the last several managers have disappeared while working. So Vinnie’s decided that 1. Stephanie is the new manager; 2. She needs to find out what’s going on to get the other manager’s kidnapped/killed/whatever; 3. She can take care of her bond enforcement job during the off hours.

That’s pretty much all you need to know. Stephanie’s running a strange little deli with Lulu as the assistant manager/sandwich guru. There are three other employees there who really know what they’re doing (mostly doing drugs while toiling away at a minimum wage job). Hijinks ensue—her car is stolen, she tracks down a couple of skips, she looks into the disappearances (with help from Joe Morelli and Ranger), and things get weird at the deli (particularly due to Lulu, who becomes a social media sensation of the moment).

I must say that Stephanie seems more competent at this gig than a lot of the other jobs she’s held over the course of this series—either in an undercover assignment or because she was trying to do something other than bond enforcement. If it wasn’t for the distraction of the investigation (and Lulu), she probably could’ve made a decent go of it and changed the series for good. It was pleasant to see her not horrible at something.

We get a little bit of another of Stephanie’s supernatural acquaintances, Gerwulf Grimoire (Wulf), here, but in such a small amount that I’m really not sure why Evanovich bothered. That said, if she was determined to use Wulf, this is precisely as much as she should.

I still don’t get what Stephanie sees in Joe, or what Ranger sees in Stephanie, or why Joe or Ranger let this stupid triangle continue. But I’m at peace with that—I’ll never get it, and Evanovich will never change it, why fight it?

If this had been part of any other story, I’d say the solution stretches credulity too far. But as it’s a Plum novel, I really don’t think I can. Honestly, it was only as I was gathering wool a couple of days later that I gave it any thought.

One last thing: I’d read the blurb for Twisted Twenty-Six a few weeks earlier, and was looking forward to reading it more than I have since the mid-teens (I’m guessing). So, it turns out that I was already primed for the near cliff-hanger last couple of pages. I don’t feel too bad saying that because it really doesn’t have much to do with this novel (although events in it do tie-in), but it’s something I have to talk about because I don’t remember Evanovich doing this in the previous twenty-four novels.^* Evanovich doing anything new at this point is something to note and celebrate.

^* Feel free to correct me in the comments.

This wasn’t anything special, but there wasn’t anything annoying about it, either. Which sets it apart from the last handful. Evanovich ticked all the boxes she needed to; got Stephanie into a new situation and had her handle it in a non-disastrous way; and capped the book off with something new. I can’t imagine Evanovich will return to the comedic heights of the early series—and I imagine even less that she feels any compulsion to do so. I just hope for a reliable level of moderate entertainment, and that’s what she delivered. It’s a decent time, but if you’re new to Plum—go back to One for the Money and immerse yourself in the first dozen or so of these before taking the plunge into the higher numbers.

3 Stars

Why Book Bloggers Blog… #Hug/FistBumpABookBloggerToday #SupportYourLocalBookNerd

By HCNewton

On December 26, 2019

In Fiction, Janet Evanovich, Mystery/Detective Fiction/Crime Fiction/Thriller, News/Misc., Quotations, Stephanie Plum

“There’s a bookstore here somewhere,” Lula said. “I’ve never been in it, but I saw it advertised. Maybe she would like a book.”

“She has four kids,” I said. “She hasn’t got time to read.”

“That’s a shame,” Lula said. “Everyone should read.”

“Do you read?”

“No. But I think about it sometimes. Problem is, I go to a bookstore and there’s so many books I get confused. So, I get coffee. I know what I’m doing when I order a coffee.”

—Janet Evanovich
from Look Alive Twenty-Five

The Big Kahuna by Janet Evanovich, Peter Evanovich: Jinkies, that was a bad book

By HCNewton

On June 11, 2019

In A-F, Fiction, Fox and O'Hare, Janet Evanovich, Lee Goldberg, Mystery/Detective Fiction/Crime Fiction/Thriller

The Big Kahuna

by Janet Evanovich, Peter Evanovich
Series: Fox and O’Hare, #6

Hardcover, 301 pg.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2019

Read: June 5 – 6, 2019

♪ ♫ ♬ Where have you gone, Lee Goldberg
Readers turn their lonely eyes to you
Wu wu wu
What’s that you say, Ms. Evanovich
Lee Goldberg has left and gone away
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey ♬ ♪ ♫

(with apologies to Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, Lee Goldberg, Janet Evanovich, Mrs. Robinson, Joe DiMaggio, my parents, teachers, Vogon poets… but dang, I spent a day and a half singing that to myself)

I’ve (purchased and) read all the previous novels at least once, read most of the short stories/novellas, and listened to all of the audiobooks of the series up to this point. I was a fan, maybe not the biggest fan — I expressed issues and reservations from time to time, but I knew I could expect a fun adventure, some fun banter, a little ridiculousness, and a clever crime story when I picked up a Fox and O’Hare novel. But when the inimitable Lee Goldberg departed, I got nervous — Evanovich has slipped in recent years (as I’ve discussed), and I don’t think she cares or notices. Still, I wasn’t sure how much of the success of these books were up to Goldberg and how much was Evanovich finding a spark in new characters that wasn’t there anymore in her Plum franchise/cash cow. Well, I think I’ve solved that mystery to my satisfaction — it was Goldberg.

I’m so, so relieved that I didn’t buy this thing. I’m sorry the local library did, too, although I’m glad I was able to take advantage of this.

First off, there wasn’t much of a con. It’s an adventure story — there was a little bit of a con at the end, but on the whole, there’s no reason for Nick Fox to be around for the whole book. As such, we don’t get most of the team showing up. Only Kate’s father, Jake, comes along.

Which is fitting, really — he belongs in adventure story. His basic approach of this retired guy who can pull off the occasional save with military equipment/connections while not liking to talk about that kind of thing has been exchanged for an older super-soldier that gives no evidence of being reticent about anything or all that old.

A new member of the team is introduced — he’s supposed to be the voice of reason keeping the destruction of private property to a minimum, and to do all the paperwork that Kate seems to ignore. First I think they did this already, and it didn’t work too well (the character was alright, but a dufus — I can’t remember if it was the same guy or not). Secondly, Kate — not their boss — told him about the super-secret arrangement with Nick Fox while in Fox’s presence and in a very casual manner. It just felt sloppy. Lastly, the character is the least-realistic character I think this series has ever produced — there’s no universe in which he makes it as an FBi agent for a month — much less be expected to be an agent that can keep things going well for this partnership.

There are a bunch of non-criminal types that really don’t need to be around but keep showing up anyway — they aren’t amusing, they aren’t well-conceived characters, they’re around to complicate plots and to be funny. They rarely succeed at the latter.

The primary villain (who I won’t name because he’s not revealed for quite a while) wasn’t actually that bad, and if they’d used him better, I wouldn’t be complaining about it at all. He just didn’t get the chance to be anything but briefly intimidating and then a pawn for Nick and Kate (making you wonder if he really wasn’t that intimidating after all). His primary accomplice was the person who did most of the work. She seemed half-baked (maybe three-quarters), and wasn’t all that convincing — her scheme (for lack of a better term) didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. Her henchmen were pathetic and uninteresting.

Nick Fox . . . was a shell of the character. He’d traded in his usual between-assignment shenanigans for some dumb scheme about social media coaching, using a pseudonym that showed none of the panache characteristic of Fox. There was little reason for him to be around for most of the book, other than to make bad advances toward Kate.

Kate, meanwhile, seemed less competent than usual. A bit more clueless about criminal activity and Nick Fox, and fairly dependent on her father for the more action-hero-y stuff. Which didn’t seem right, either. She said “jinkies” so much I wondered if she’d been Velma in a previous life — a trait I don’t remember belonging to her. Of all the characters, she seemed more herself than the others — still, she seemed off.

The relationship between the Kate and Nick really doesn’t make sense. Some of what’s said between the two of them makes me think that this volume takes place between Books 3 & 4 rather than after Book 5. Although that makes the whole explanation for Cosmo even worse, because I think it was Book 3 that got Kate shackled with the paperwork partner last time. The last chapter of The Big Kahuna takes the nice relationship that was developing between the two protagonists during the Evanovich/Goldberg run and ruins it — and ruins the timeline, too. If this takes place after Book 5, it’s meaningless (as is a lot of what happened before). If it takes place after book 3 (which makes the most sense), it ruins the arc of 4 and 5. Then again, it’s not like the Plum books have a real timeline, it looks like the Evanovich2 run will follow that. It’s not about development anymore, it’s not about growth of character or relationship — it’s about churning out books that’ll sell.

The whole thing felt like a Stephanie Plum book that Stephanie, Joe and Ranger forgot to show up for — but reasonable facsimiles thereof did. One of the great things about the previous novels is that they didn’t feel like Evanovich, or completely like a Goldberg. That’s out the window. And the book, en toto, suffered for it.

I’ve spent far more time and space on this post than I intended to (and still haven’t touched all my notes), so let me wrap this up. A year or two back after I spent time critiquing a book that I gave two stars to, one of my readers asked if I gave that novel 2, what would it take to get a 1? I said a book would have to make me mad, not just disappoint. Probably, on merit, I should give this two stars — there were some good moments, I have to admit (although while writing this, I seem to have forgotten them). But as I was thinking about that, I remembered that conversation, and well…this book as made me mad. It took a solid and reliably entertaining series, with good characters and ruined them. Just ruined them. I might give it one more try, just to see if they learned anything from this disaster (my guess is that sales won’t suffer much and they’ll learn nothing). But, without a different co-author, I can’t imagine why anyone would read these books again.

—–

Killer Thriller by Lee Goldberg: The Best-Selling Author/Hapless Hero Ian Ludlow Returns to Save the Day Again

By HCNewton

On May 24, 2019

In Fiction, Ian Ludlow, Janet Evanovich, Lee Goldberg, Mystery/Detective Fiction/Crime Fiction/Thriller

I wrote about half of a post about this book to go up yesterday. But I realized I’d spent a lot of time talking about things I really didn’t care about, and hadn’t spent any time talking about the bits I did care about. But I couldn’t turn the ship around (much to my annoyance). So, I let one more day go without a post — a truly annoying trend for the week/month. This isn’t quite what I wanted it to be. But it’s done. So that’s a start.
—

Killer Thriller

by Lee Goldberg
Series: Ian Ludlow Thrillers, #2

Kindle Edition, 277 pg.
Thomas & Mercer, 2019

Read: May 21 – 22, 2019

“…I want Ludlow under constant and total visual, audio, digital, and personal surveillance,” Yat added. If anybody in Beijing asked about it, he’d explain that it was part of his ongoing investigation into Wang Kang’s activities, which wasn’t far from the truth. Those were always the most effective lies. “Mobilize every resource that we have.”

“Including the assassins?”

“Especially the assassins,” Yat said.

In True Fiction, Lee Goldberg introduced us to Ian Ludlow — former TV writer, now thriller writer extraordinaire — who discovered (the hard way) that terrorists were using his fiction as a playbook. Then he had to go on the run for his life from these people who didn’t appreciate the fact that he’d be able to identify what they were doing. Running alongside him (frequently behind, more frequently ahead of him) was the poor girl who was supposed to schlep him from bookstore event to bookstore event in Seattle. Margo didn’t like Ludlow, but finding their fates bound together, she threw herself into surviving — and is very likely the reason he did survive.

Not only did they survive, they uncovered and defeated a group within US Intelligence that were actively plotting against the US. It’s a highly improbable story that didn’t feel that improbable — yet was told in a way that played up the tension, the suspense and the fun. It was one of the funniest and most enjoyable books I read last year.

Now it’s time for the inevitable sequel — Killer Thriller — and Lee Goldberg has somehow done what almost every good sequel strives to do (and few succeed) — he tells pretty much the same story with just a couple of differences, yet does so in a way that feels completely fresh and original — in most ways, superior to the original. I don’t think it’d be hard to take a semi-thorough outline of both novels to compare against each other and find that they’re freakishly similar. But I only thought about that when I sat back to think about the book and its predecessor. While reading, I didn’t care about True Fiction or any similarities the current book had to it. I just had too much fun while reading the sequel I couldn’t be bothered to compare it.

Which is a pretty neat trick, really. It’s like when Chandler Bing said, ” Oh–I think this is the episode of “Three’s Company” where there’s some kind of misunderstanding.” Just because every episode of Three’s Company featured a few misunderstandings — it didn’t keep things (usually) from not being funny. The same kind of thing here — just because Ludlow and Margo are once again thrown in to the middle of things they’re not ready for, it doesn’t keep the action scenes from being riveting and the funny bits from being funny.

So, if you haven’t read the first book, let me tell you a little bit about Ian Ludlow. He’s overweight, doesn’t take care of himself in anyway, shape or form. He doesn’t seem to be attractive (and bounces between knowing it and forgetting it). His ego is pretty big, but he’s also realistic about himself. He’s lazy about everything but his writing — and he could likely be more disciplined about it. Okay, based on what we’re told about his greatest creation, Clint Straker — imagine the combination of Bond and Reacher — he’s pretty lazy. Still, he comes up with incredible plots (don’t take my word for it, take the word of people who based terror campaigns on his work). Deep down (Margo would argue very, very deep) he’s a decent guy. Especially for the 15-25 minutes a day he’s not hitting on some unwilling woman, or thinking about hitting on her.

Margo, meanwhile, is a would-be singer/songwriter, a former dog walker, and is really vocationally lost. She’s smart, she’s tough, and adaptable — even if she’s still trying to figure out how to adapt after the events of True Fiction. She’s picked up some self-defense skills along the way, which will prove to be handy.

Ludlow brings Margo with him to Hong Kong to act as his research assistant and hopefully relax a little from the stress that’s eating at her from her recent harrowing experiences (almost being killed counts as harrowing, right?). He’s going to Hong Kong to do a little promotion for the studio that’s turning his first Straker book into a movie. While there, he wants Margo to scope out some places and things he can use in his upcoming novel. In this novel, the Chinese government is waging a secret campaign to take over the US through political manipulation and selling us cheap products they can use to spy on us. Straker’s going to fight against them in Hong Kong, so he needs some local color.

Once in the hotel (and on the hotel’s wi-fi), a group of Chinese espionage agents tap into Ludlow’s laptop and make an unsettling discovery. The plot laid out in Ludlows “novel” is ridiculously close to the plan this same group has spent years devising and implementing to take over the US government through manipulation, cash, and fear. Clearly this man’s novels are just a cover story, he has to be the most wily of secret agents — using this preposterous writer character as a cover for his actual abilities and mission to stop this Chinese plot.

So the Chinese begin their dangerous game of cat and mouse with the “spy” Ian Ludlow. It’s more of a cat-and-clueless-yet-incredibly-lucky-mouse game. But you get the point. But hey, it works. Think Inspector Gadget and Penny — without the robotic arms and sentient dog.

Like Ludlow, Goldberg spent a lot of time as a writer/producer of television. And in both books he does a great job of lampooning the men and women writing, directing and starring in TV and movies. You can’t help but feel Goldberg exorcising some personal demons as he does so — particularly in the table read scene and everything that Damon Matthews (the actor playing Straker) says and does. Incidentally, I’m sure any parallels people might draw between Matthews/Straker and Cruise/Reacher are completely unintentional on Goldberg’s part. For my money, if doing this sort of thing helps Goldberg deal with the frustrations that seem to plague most TV writers/screenwriters, I hope he keeps pouring out his frustrations on the page — I love ’em.

Goldberg seems to have learned a lot from the Fox and O’Hare books he co-wrote with Janet Evanovich — there are huge chunks of this book that feel like they were originally planned for one of them. Whether Goldberg repurposed the scenes or was just influenced by his time with that series really doesn’t matter — the sensibility that made that series work so well is making this one work very well, too.

From the big things — like fight scenes or car chases — to the way he describes a Washington D. C. restaurant, to little touches like the way that someone smuggles information out of China, Goldberg is at the top of his game — which is an accomplishment. I think I’ve read almost 30 of his books and there are maybe one or two that are more satisfying than Killer Thriller. Thrills and laughs together — and maybe maybe a little surprising character depth and development (just a bit, we don’t want Ludlow to stop being a cad and a loser), this is a whole lotta fun. You can come into this one fresh, you won’t appreciate the changes in character (particularly Margo), but you’ll have just about as much fun as the rest of us.

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4 Stars

Hardcore Twenty-Four by Janet Evanovich: A Swing-and-a-Miss from a Typically Reliable Source

By HCNewton

On December 26, 2018

In Fiction, Janet Evanovich, Mystery/Detective Fiction/Crime Fiction/Thriller, Stephanie Plum

Hardcore Twenty-Four

by Janet Evanovich
Series: Stephanie Plum, #24

Mass Market Paperback, 275 pg.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2017
Read: December 25, 2018

I dropped Lula off at the office and went to my parents’ house to mooch lunch. They live five minutes from the office, five minutes from Morelli’s house, and a time warp away from me. Even when my mom gets a new refrigerator or buys new curtains the house still feels precisely the same as when I was in school. It’s equally comforting and disturbing.

At this point the series feels a lot like Stephanie’s childhood home — they all feel the same, which is comforting and disturbing for the reader. This book ended up serving as a prime example of that.

I was feeling pretty good early on, when Connie was giving Stephanie a couple of new FTA’s to go pick up — they seemed equally interesting and potentially amusing. There’s a man who got upset by the poor service he received at a coffee shop and shot up a few cars in the parking lot, and a “pharmaceutical activist” who was arrested after blowing up a meth lab he was using in an abandoned building.

Actually, the travails of the slippery fifty-two year old who threw a tantrum and his eccentric wife is a pretty fun storyline. But the story of Zero Slick gets derailed right away by antics around his political activism and then leads into the major plot-line of the novel about a potential Zombie-outbreak — that both Zero and Lula seem to be overly focused on. That ties into a series of crimes where heads are being stolen from corpses at the various undertakers in town.

Yup. Zombies. Oh, and Diesel shows up. I was so glad that he wasn’t around anymore, it actually took some effort to remember who he was. Throw in an online boyfriend for Grandma Mazur and things are overfull with the zaniness.

I spent so much of the book just wanting it over — I did appreciate the story-line about the shooter — and a couple of other FTA’s that Stephanie picked up. I liked almost everything about Morelli for a change. The Ranger flirtation (and things beyond it), not to mention the Diesel flirting, the Zombie story (even when Evanovich tries to ground it in reality), and the Mazur stories just didn’t work for me. A little too crazy, a little too would=be comedic, without success.

I like the series, as often as I grumble about it — but this was beyond grumbling. I honestly had a hard time remembering why I keep reading these. They used to be funny, now I settle for amusing and almost charming. But I know Evanovich is capable of more, and I hope she gets back to form soon – even if it’s a diminished form. I’ll be back for Look Alive Twenty-Five, but my anticipation will be muted.

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2 1/2 Stars

Turbo Twenty-Three by Janet Evanovich

By HCNewton

On December 26, 2017

In Janet Evanovich, Mystery/Detective Fiction/Crime Fiction/Thriller, Stephanie Plum

Turbo Twenty-Three

by Janet Evanovich
Series: Stephanie Plum, #23

Mass Market Paperback, 319 pg.
Bantam, 2017

Read: December 14 – 15, 2017

While trying to apprehend an habitual hijacker, Lula finds herself behind the wheels of a recently stolen refrigerated truck — which she promptly runs into a Trenton Police Car, much to Stephanie’s chagrin. Both the police and the bounty hunters are surprised to find a corpse in the back of the truck — covered in chocolate and sprinkled with nuts, just like a Bogart bar.

Coincidentally enough, Ranger just got hired to handle security for the Bogart ice cream factory and wants to send Stephanie undercover to help dig up some holes in the security there. She doesn’t find a murderer straight off, but she does find a lot of problems with the security. Joe’s not handling this case for the PD, but he’s still able to provide a little intel when needed.

Speaking of coincidences, Grandma Mazur has a new fella in her life, who happens to tend bar where one of the prime suspects regularly drinks himself into a stupor. Which works out nicely for everyone.

About the only person not coincidentally connected to these crimes is Lula. She spends most of the book working on audition videos to reality shows. She and Randy Briggs make a couple of videos for Naked and Afraid-esque shows. Thankfully, there are no illustrations to this book or I’d have to bleach my eyes.

The comedy is a little dialed back from what it has been recently — which is good. Although it is there — once I saw that Stephanie was put undercover at the plant, I wrote in my notes, “we’d better get a Lucy [Ricardo] moment.” Thankfully, we did, shortly after I’d given up hope and was prepared to devote a paragraph or two to ranting about how Evanovich missed the obvious and nigh-obligatory move. Outside the Lula stuff, I enjoyed the rest of the comedic beats (and, actually, the Lula stuff wasn’t as annoying as it could’ve been).

The mystery itself was pretty easy for the reader to solve, but it’s a pretty clever bit of criminal activity that Stephanie and Ranger eventually uncover — and the way the story unfolds is entertaining enough that you don’t mind seeing the solution more than 100 pages before Stephanie does.

This is a solid entry in this long-running and still (generally) entertaining series. It’d be a decent jumping on point as well as a pleasant reunion with old friends (new readers might find it more entertaining than I did, actually, running jokes being a bit fresher for them). As a story this might actually work a bit better than some of the books do, and it looks like Evanovich has the humor/plot ratio just right, nothing to complain about here.

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3 Stars